i'll pretend you're mine but i am the fool
by ohstarswald
Summary: Clara didn't plan on losing her Doctor again, but the TARDIS had another idea.


"You wouldn't happen to have seen this woman around, have you?"

Clara was _desperate._

She stood under humming lights, holding her phone out to the poor girl who'd been trapped into offering her help. The picture, of her and _her_ Doctor, was scarcely a week old, snapped under a triple-moonlight spectacular at a Festival of Stars on Pellu. They were laughing, looking as if they'd been dipped in vats of glitter, ignoring the clamor of the parade they'd been attending; the next picture captured the sly kiss the Doctor had snuck; the picture after that displayed the blurry image of Clara's hand making its way through the Doctor's whair, surroundings forgotten, her only focus falling on the woman before her—

But the girl behind the desk didn't need all the fine details.

"Uh, I can't say I have," the girl, Yasmin, according to her nametag, admitted.

Clara sighed and let her head drop; she closed her eyes and swore internally. "Of course you haven't, this city's big." She laid her phone face-down on the counter and used it to prop her chin up with her elbow, tapping a slow, erratic beat with her other hand. "How hard is it to request a missing person's?"

"Not very," Yasmin said, not unkindly. She even thrown in a sympathetic smile, believing she'd realized the situation. Clara knew anything she came up with would be as far from the truth as possible.

That morning had started off simply: she and the Doctor were a tangle of limbs, their skin in contact on almost every inch of their bodies, just as they had started each day since her Doctor had found her again. Clara had kissed her partner carefully, not at all without passion, tracing her collarbones with light touches; her hand was guided downwards, slowly, ever slowly, by the Doctor's own, and soon they'd lost another hour to the sheets.

It was the Doctor who had pulled the both of them from the bed, tugging Clara up by the wrists until they were standing together, swaying gently to a nonexistent melody neither could place. The Doctor had a mere two inches over her, but used them to her advantage to kiss Clara's forehead. "We should do something _different_ today," she had declared.

"How different do you mean?" Clara had asked, snaking her embrace around the Doctor's hips.

"Let's go on a date."

Clara feigned offense with a short gasp. She looked up at the Doctor with mock concern. "Was last night not enough for you?" It had been a museum whose name they couldn't remember; they'd been asked to leave after getting too lost in each others' mouths under a then-brand-new Picasso, but it hadn't put a damper on their mood.

"That was date _night. This_ can be date _morning_."

"Isn't that every morning with us?" Clara had teased.

"You could at least play along," the Doctor had said in the same tone.

So Clara did.

She had played along as they got dressed together (staring for longer than was needed when the Doctor chose to only button the white shirt under her blazer halfway, all of her own accord), offering encouraging nods when the Doctor claimed she couldn't quite decide what her sense of style was just yet; she had played along every time the Doctor complained the trousers she'd put on gave her barely any mobility; she had played along when she couldn't coerce even a hint of their destination out of the Doctor _or_ the TARDIS; she had even played along when the TARDIS started to act up under the Doctor's control.

Playing along when the TARDIS tipped too much to one side and threw her Doctor out of an open door was, in all honesty, rather tricky.

Clara could remember shouting at the TARDIS, and she could remember landing in an alleyway shrouded by shadows from the buildings on either side of it. She couldn't remember much of the night and second morning that she had spent searching for the Doctor high and low, though. It only seemed fair to try something new, in her last-ditch effort to get her Doctor back. _Again._

"What's her name, miss?" Yasmin prompted, bringing Clara back with a start.

On autopilot, she began to say 'John Smith,' but caught herself in time to avoid the awkwardness of pinning the old name to a new face. "Joanne Smith," Clara said. "Doctor Joanne Smith."

And then all too suddenly did it hit Clara how _silly_ she sounded. She was about to fill out a missing person's report for an _alien_ who had the habit of whisking away any young woman who caught her eye. How well would that go down with the papers?

" _Actually_ ," Clara announced, letting her body language perk up considerably, "knowing her, I bet she'll turn up eventually. Tell you what." She reached down and plucked the paperwork and pen from the desk, much to Yasmin's apparent horror. "I'll leave you _my_ number, and if you see her—or anything out of the ordinary, really—you can give me a ring. Deal?"

"S-sure, I guess." Yasmin peeked at the paper; Clara was already headed for the door. "I'll keep you updated, Clara…?"

"Thanks so much." With the door to the police station shut firmly behind her, for a moment, she hoped she had not come off as rude so much as a woman with a new mission. Wasting no time, she marched her way back to the TARDIS's newest parking spot, snapping her fingers to the doors as soon as she was close enough. "I think we need to have a chat," she said to the console.

In a rare turn of events, the TARDIS remained silent, save for its constant hum.

"What have you done with her?" Clara demanded, clenching her fists by her sides instead of slamming them against the delicate machinery like she wanted time, the TARDIS made a low warbling. "What do you _mean,_ we're too early?! You dropped a woman over Sheffield, where else could she be?!"

Next up, a series of beeps. "Oh, the laws of space and time _this_ and the laws of space and time _that!_ Just tell me where you put my girlfriend!" A sharp _zzzp!_ sound. "Yes, I'm using the g-word. Suck it up."

A bleep and a whir with undertones that told her her answers should have been obvious. "You _threw the Doctor out_ to _redecorate_?" A ding that was better suited for a grand-prize win on a game show. Behind Clara, the doors to the outside world completely vanished. "Not this again…"

The lights in the console room— _his_ console room, _his_ that held memories she would never lose, _his_ that Clara did not think she was quite ready to let go of—went dark, save for a pair near a staircase that led downwards. Finally catching the hint, she followed them; they illuminated in time with her footsteps as she dove headfirst deeper into the TARDIS, all the way up to the threshold of a room no other being had ever existed in.

"Okay, fine, you were telling the truth," Clara said meekly, taking in the change as thoroughly as she could. The geometric lights embedded into the walls gave off a soft ambiance she would have appreciated for their bedroom, too, but she couldn't complain about it; the new controls weren't as organized as they had been for their predecessor, but managed to look like they could fit perfectly in place under her Doctor's hands; the crystals might have been a bit much, but she could see herself growing to like them.

Tentatively, Clara placed a hand on one of the crystals in question. Resisting the urge to pull back when she felt like a door had opened in her mind, a voice she was aware she would never hear out loud told her, _She's an idiot._

"The Doctor?"

 _Who else?_ the TARDIS huffed. _I had to make things easier for her. She forgot how to fly me._

Clara scoffed. "She has not."

 _Oh, yes she has. Haven't you noticed she's been letting_ you _pilot for the past two months?_

"That's one month and twenty-nine days to you," Clara corrected. She'd only started counting days again since the moment in the forest, since her Doctor had stepped straight back into her life— _afterlife? Half-life? What life is in between heartbeats?—_ and since she'd found a reason to keep going again.

The longer she thought back, though, the more the TARDIS's point made itself clear. She frowned; with a smirk to the voice she'd adopted, the TARDIS added, _I'm always right._

"So you are." Pulling her hand away, Clara circled the new console, reluctant to touch anything. Her expertise had fallen to mapping out the Doctor's new body, and that was a feat in itself. "You could have at least warned one of us before you dumped her out into the night, you know."

The TARDIS sent herself into flight in response.

One shockingly smooth ride later, Clara dared to peek outside. Four faces stared back at her - two in awe belonging to strangers, one in shock belonging to the girl behind the desk that Clara had abandoned no more than twenty minutes ago, and one in delight belonging to the person she'd fallen for three times and counting.

"You _idiot_ ," she breathed, tripping over herself in her haste and right into the Doctor's arms.

Disregarding the threat of prying eyes, they kissed like they were under the Picasso again; the Doctor broke away long enough to murmur, "You won't get rid of me that easily," coaxing half a giggle from Clara against her lips.

"You're _my_ idiot," Clara told her, hanging off her neck to look down. "Did you change your outfit?"

A wide grin reached the Doctor's eyes and distracted her, to Clara's disappointment, from continuing their kiss. "I did, thank you for noticing. D'you like it?" She waited patiently while Clara bit the corner of her lip in thought.

"I _did_ quite like the one from this morning—or last night, or whenever it was." She tilted her head, studying the eagerness in the Doctor's eyes closely. "But… hold on."

"What is it?"

"Did you throw out that blazer?"

"Yeah. It got kind of burnt, because I kind of fell through the roof of a train."

"You threw out my blazer!"

"That one wasn't yours!"

"It _definitely_ was."

"Good riddance, it didn't have pockets!" To accentuate her point, the Doctor released Clara from the grip she had snaked around her waist, and shoved her hands into her new coat's pockets. "It's a woman's coat with _real pockets_ , Clara. I couldn't _not_ wear it." She opened her arms as much as she could with her hands still hidden away, showing off the inner lining of the coat and the design on her new shirt.

"You really wanted to announce to the universe you're a woman in love with a woman, didn't you?" Clara asked seriously, a smile giving away her rouse.

The Doctor raised her eyebrows as if she'd only just noticed. "...Maybe."

"I'm still making you replace that blazer."

Putting on a show with a loud sigh, the Doctor looked skyward. " _Fine."_

One of the strangers cleared their throat, successfully regaining the attention of the couple. "Sorry to interrupt whatever… that was," the older of the two men said, "but are you going to, well, explain?"

"Like, all of _that_ ," the younger man requested, circling his hand in Clara and the TARDIS's direction.

"I told you her girlfriend was looking for her," the girl, Yasmin, added.

The Doctor's eyebrows scrunched up, along with her nose. She turned to Clara again. "We're saying the g-word now?"

Clara raised her shoulders. "I'm not against it."

"Noted," the Doctor said. Addressing the group, she said, "This is Clara; we used to travel together part-time but now we're full-time—that goes for the relationship aspect, too. That's my TARDIS, the ship I kept telling you about. We would love to have you, right?" On the last word, she nodded at Clara; a look that told her she was forgetting something was returned to her. "Right! Right. This is Yaz, Ryan, and Graham." She pointed at each newcomer.

"I met Yaz earlier," Clara explained, waving as casually at the three as she could for someone who had just appeared out of thin air and had attacked their new friend with kisses and accusations. "I almost put out a missing person's for you."

"Really?"

"Really."

"We met a man with teeth for a face."

"Sounds scary."

"It was. I'll tell you all about it tonight."

"That might kill the mood, don't you think?"

"Is it always like this?" Ryan asked. Failing to hide a smile, Clara looked to the Doctor for an answer.

The Doctor mirrored her, somewhere near ruefully. "Oh, yes." She shuffled closer to Clara, only to replace her arm around her waist. "Just as the universe intended."


End file.
